APPLE VALLEY — Once faded and marked with yellow graffiti, the historic sign welcoming eastbound motorists to town on Highway 18 has been refurbished as part of an Eagle Scout Service project coordinated by Jonathan Cosico.

Dubbing his project “Apple Valley Sign Redux,” Cosico and a team of more than 20 volunteers sanded and washed the sign before giving it a fresh coat of paint. He procured donations from multiple Apple Valley businesses for the project that he said required a total of 400 man hours.

Cosico was honored for his efforts at the Nov. 14 Town Council meeting.

“The process took quite a while, and starting from around, I want to say, March when we started looking at the sign,” he said during the meeting. “And then it was around summertime where we started actually getting work done ... It took quite a bit of learning how to coordinate several different parties of people from donors to helpers to people working on the actual sign.”

Cosico initially approached Apple Valley Chamber of Commerce CEO Janice Moore with his idea, but Moore was reluctant because the project seemed to tall a task.

“When he came to us to say what his Eagle (Scout) project was ... I said, ‘Jonathan, that’s a huge sign. It’s a historical sign,’” Moore told the Council. “I could probably think of every reason why I’m not sure this young man would be able to complete this sign because I was so caught up with the huge, long forks and spoons and knives that were in front of me.”

Moore’s reference there was to the allegory of the long spoons, wherein the difference between heaven and hell are showed via people who starve when they’re forced to eat with spoons that are too long. In some iterations of the allegory, the people learn to use the spoons to feed one another.

Moore discussed it in those terms to highlight Cosico’s uncanny ability to help others in his community.

“Jonathan finds a way to do that,” she said. “He picks up the forks and knives, and he feeds his neighbor. And he feeds the person across the table from him ... And he did it before his 18th birthday.”

Cosico received a certificate of recognition from the town for his project, and Mayor Scott Nassif thanked him for “beautifying the community.”

Former Chamber of Commerce Chairman Bob Tinsley, who donated tools and watched the beautification process, said Cosico and his team of volunteers did far more than restore the sign, though.

“They cleared out all the brush and weeds around it and made the whole area look good,” Tinsley told the Daily Press. “I hauled away 12 big bags of blow trash that they picked up. It looks like a whole new area over there. They did a heck of a job.”

Matthew Cabe can be reached at MCabe@VVDailyPress.com or at 760-951-6254. Follow him on Twitter @DP_MatthewCabe.